‘You are lucky, Helen, to have that baby!’
I said:
‘Yes, and I have two others . . . but they are not like this.’
And then I talked to Mollie, about everything that had happened; about Walter, and Maud, and his mother, and how I was beaten by it all, and how little use I had been.
And then about Hugo’s coming, and all that we did together.
I said:
‘We saw pictures, and heard music, and then we walked about and talked. We went to the station, and there was no train, but there was one in the morning, and I saw him off in a fog . . . it was all foggy’ . . . and I seemed to see it again, as I talked about it, the station filled with smoke, and the lights, and the thin, sharp fog . . . and Hugo’s train going out, away, round the bend of the line . . .
And she said:
‘Is that all, Helen?’
I said: